


Not in the Frame

by randi2204



Category: Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-11
Updated: 2011-12-11
Packaged: 2017-10-27 04:39:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randi2204/pseuds/randi2204
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What <i>could</i> Ezra be waiting for?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not in the Frame

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: For the Candy Hearts ficathon prompt _RISING STAR_. (It's really sideways.)
> 
> Disclaimer: The characters herein belong to MGM, Mirisch and Trilogy. Not mine, no money.

From his seat in front of the jail, Chris could just make out Ezra through the dusty windows of the saloon.  He sat at his table, cards in hand, but Chris knew that he wasn’t involved in a game; his attention kept straying from those cards to the street.  He pulled out his watch to check the time, then tucked it away, only to do the same again a few minutes later.

 

 _Waitin’ on the stage again,_ Chris thought, stretching out his legs.

 

“… sure is distracted, ain’t he?”

 

From the corner of his eye, Chris flicked a glance at Buck, slouched comfortably against one of the posts for the overhang.  Buck smoothed his fingers over his mustache, looking thoughtful.

 

On Chris’s other side, Nathan snorted.  “Distracted ain’t the word for it,” he said.  When Chris looked at him in turn, he was standing with his arms crossed, fingers drumming in the crook of his elbow.  “Stage come in yesterday, he didn’t even give the folk on it a second look.  Went right on past ‘em, asked the driver somethin’ then just walked away.”

 

Buck contemplated that for a moment, still studying Ezra.  “He look disappointed?”

 

 _Hell, yeah,_ Chris thought.  He dropped his chin a little, so his frown was hidden by the brim of his hat.

 

The soft rustle of fabric told him that Nathan shrugged.  “Yeah, guess so.  Hard to tell, sometimes.”

 

“He’s waitin’ for somethin’, then,” Buck said, tone full of conviction.  “Wonder if it’s somethin’ from his mother?”  He looked at Chris, then at Nathan.

 

“Dunno,” Nathan replied.  He unbent enough to push his hat back a little, a puzzled expression settling over his face.  “She never sent him nothin’ before, did she?”

 

 _No,_ Chris replied silently, _she never has._   He crossed his arms and slumped a little deeper into the chair.  Nathan and Buck were more than able to carry on this conversation without him – they’d already proven that.  For a while, he listened to their ideas fly back and forth around him, each one more outlandish than the last, while he kept one eye on Ezra and one eye on the end of the street where the stage would enter town.

 

He knew right well what Ezra was waiting on.  He just didn’t think that the others needed to know.

 

***

Thankfully, by the time the stagecoach actually arrived, Nathan had been drawn back to his clinic to treat young Master Cooper’s injured wrist – the boy was forever falling all over himself with clumsiness – and Chris had managed to send Buck off… somewhere.  _Most likely to find JD,_ Ezra thought, closing the door of his room behind him, though he had to admit that at the moment, he didn’t much care.

 

The bundle was slim and very light, wrapped in brown paper and tied with a bit of string.  Inside was a small case, bound in tawny leather, with a bit of stationery protruding from one end.  Before opening the case, Ezra plucked the paper out.

 

The address at the top of the page read _Wm. Caldwell & Co., Photographers, Albuquerque._  The note itself was dated the week before, and asked him to accept the photograph case as reparation for the length of time it had taken to send him his purchase.

 

Because Mister Caldwell had had such a successful run through the territory with his wares, he had not had enough of his development solution to produce this photograph that day, as he had advertised.  Instead, he’d taken the exposed plate with him, with an assurance that he would send the photograph as soon as he had returned to Albuquerque.  Given the speed at which the mules had pulled Mister Caldwell’s heavily laden wagon out of town, Ezra found himself unsurprised that it had taken the man three weeks to return there.  _Stopping at every dustbowl of a town that he missed on his way out, of course,_ he thought wryly.

 

Ezra smirked down at the page.  _Mister Caldwell,_ he thought, _I may accept the case, but I am not fooled one bit._   He let his fingers trail over the imprinted design on the case’s cover, and wondered why he was so uncertain when he knew just what was inside.

 

 _You are being exceedingly foolish, Ezra._   The words sounded just as his mother would say them, almost as if she were there.

 

He huffed a laugh.  _I have already been most exceedingly foolish, Mother,_ he thought, and opened the case.

 

The picture was as he’d imagined; himself and Chris, captured in the oval frame of the case’s interior, all in black and white and shades of grey.

 

It took his breath away.

 

It was, in one respect, a very simple picture.  There was just one of the chairs from the saloon, and the backdrop was the flat painted scene on the canvas of Mister Caldwell’s tent, badly worn and fading.  But the subject matter…

 

Ezra sat in the chair, not quite facing the camera squarely, legs crossed at the knee.  Chris stood behind him, just a bit off to one side.  His hand rested on Ezra’s shoulder, and Ezra had covered it with one of his own.  He was looking up at Chris so the camera had captured him in profile, the shadow of a dimple the only clue to the pleased grin he wore.

 

When Mister Caldwell had first arrived in their dusty little hamlet with his mule-drawn portable photographic studio, Ezra had resisted the idea of a picture… perhaps, in part, because he had wanted one so badly.  _I have no plans to leave this place,_ he told himself, watching the townsfolk walk into Mister Caldwell’s tent, dressed in their Sunday best, _and therefore no need of photographs to help me remember what I could not possibly forget regardless._

 

Ezra knew that eventually he would give into his desire, but he still wanted to put that moment off as long as he could.  JD had all but begged for a picture of the seven of them together.  Chris had agreed only reluctantly to that; Ezra did not want to have to face his rejection of this much more personal wish.

 

He had longed to toss it out with a bit of offhanded flair – _your last chance, Mister Larabee, if you wish to pose with me for a picture_ – but when the words had at last tumbled from his tongue, they were, mortifyingly enough, a reflection of his genuine feelings.

 

Chris’s laconic agreement had been... unexpected.  He had rather thought that Chris would decline, particularly given that Ezra suspected the last time Chris had sat for a photographer had been for the picture in his wife’s locket.

 

But agree he had, and had appeared at Mister Caldwell’s tent in the grey shirt he knew Ezra favored.

 

That in itself was… more than he’d asked, more than he’d hoped for, if the truth was told.  He would have been just as pleased with the tintype if Chris had stood there with a face of stone, as he had in the portrait of the seven of them for JD.

 

But in this picture, Chris had his head tilted down slightly, looking at him rather than at the camera.  A smile threatened at the corner of his mouth, in that instant Ezra had come to know so well, right before it bloomed into something that was gleeful and wicked and made Ezra’s heart a little tight to see.

 

 _Because he was looking up, Ezra saw Chris’s mouth twitch at Mister Caldwell’s admonishment to be still.  Then Chris bent to look at him, and Ezra couldn’t help but smile at Chris’s amused expression, a_ real _smile, something he wore only infrequently._

 

 _At that moment, the camera sounded, signaling that their photograph had been taken, capturing them.  Not an instant afterward, Chris’s face…_ gentled _somehow; his eyes still glittered with humor, but more softly, like a star setting with dawn rather than sharply rising at evening, his mouth curving not into that fiendish grin but into one that seemed… almost fond._

 

 _Ezra’s breath caught at the sight, and his fingers clenched over Chris’s.  Mister Caldwell’s voice drew his attention from Chris only reluctantly, and Chris’s hand tightened on his shoulder, squeezing just a bit before releasing him._

 

He couldn’t see that in the photograph, not a bit of it, but the picture recalled for him exactly the way Chris had looked that moment after it was taken… as if he had not remembered it each day since then.

 

The soft rap at his door startled him, and he laid the case aside with elaborate carelessness before rising to answer.  It would never do for anyone to see how dear what that leather case contained had become to him already.

 

Chris swept in the moment he opened the door, waited for him to close it again before speaking.  “It finally got here?”

 

Ezra nodded, his gaze going to the case where it rested.  Slowly, he crossed back to pick it up.  “Would you care to see?” he asked, and couldn’t think why he sounded so hesitant.

 

Chris’s dark eyes took in the case, the way he held it, then moved back to his face.  “You get what you wanted?” he asked, his voice soft.

 

The question gave him pause.  He considered it briefly – about as long as it took him to draw a breath – then set the case back down.  A step and he stood in front of Chris, close enough to breathe in the familiar scent of him, close enough to let one hand cradle the side of his face and still not quite close enough somehow.  “I believe I got what I wanted a month ago,” he said, thumb stroking lightly over Chris’s cheek.  “What I received today, welcome though it was, was merely a… commemoration of the event.”

 

Chris’s mouth curved in that smile.

 

***

February 28, 2011


End file.
